Families are complicated, and wealthy families can be even more complicated. At Timonier Family Office we take a disciplined, holistic approach to wealth management, serving doctors, hospital executives, private practice groups, and business owners in the Triad region of Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point.

Today I want to share our nine-step WealthCare System, to help residents of North Carolina and South Carolina better understand how our Family Office works.

1. Build a Family Financial Tree

Your Family Financial Tree includes all the major family members, from grandparents to nephews and nieces, and outlines their age, health, financial status, and how they accumulated their money. It also spells out whether the person is likely to need financial help, i.e. elder care, or whether the person is slated to receive inheritance assets. This exercise often reveals hidden trends that will affect the family’s financial future.

2. Uncover the Family’s Belief System

Do family members generally have a negative or positive outlook on wealth? Are most of the family assets invested too conservatively because of outdated beliefs about the stock market? Is there a pattern of being frugal or one of building castles in the sky? This step reveals attitudes toward money and wealth that often have a profound effect on a family’s wealth and well being.

3. Create a Family Mission Statement

We encourage family members to work together to create a Family Mission Statement. This exercise is not about money, but rather is designed to reveal the family’s values, hopes and dreams. It helps us to understand the family’s goals and helps family members stay on track with what is most cherished.

4. Find and Organize the Facts

We delve into the specifics, identifying and recording tax returns, investment and savings accounts, insurance coverage, real estate collectibles, business ownership, wills and trusts, and estate plans.

5. Draft a Family Vision Profile

Building on the family’s Belief System and Mission Statement, we craft a series of highly detailed and measurable goals in five categories: Desired retirement age, desired levels of annual savings before retirement, investment portfolio blends, desired after-tax income post-retirement, and desired assets as your legacy. Then the family ranks these five variables in terms of importance, to help guide our decision-making process.

6. Determine the Specifics of What is Desired

We bring all of the information together into a profile that outlines your family’s “Ideal and Acceptable Goals.” For instance, your ideal retirement age may be 62, but you may accept working to 65. Your ideal budget for vacations post-retirement may be $30,000 for 15 years, but you may find it acceptable to have no vacation funds set aside.

7. Test Different Portfolio Approaches

We stress test various portfolio blends, from risk-averse to aggressive growth, and the results usually fall somewhere between your ideal and acceptable goals. By ranking various portfolio blends we will then know which variables to change first in proactively managing your assets.

8. Implement Your Plan

We take care of putting your new financial plan into action, from setting up appropriate investments to restructuring debt and matching insurance coverage to your risk management needs.

9. Deliver Status Reports

We diligently monitor progress toward your goals and proactively evaluate your financial status. Like the management of defined benefit plans, our approach acts like an early warning system to determining if you are overfunded, underfunded, or in the comfort zone with your Targeted Plans.

An Advisory Team will work together to conduct these nine steps for you in a methodical, holistic manner, always keeping in mind the No. 1 goal: Helping you and your family define and achieve your desires.

Tim L. Baker, President and CEO

Timonier, Wealth Beyond Financial™